Themes and Styles: Sex and Sexuality edit
Common themes within Carters work is sex, sexuality and eroticisms. She created stories that look at themes such as feminism, women's sexuality and the erotic form it can take on. Not only that by the physiological roll sexuality takes on, how for many, sex is about power and that power brings liberation to the characters (Lau[1]).
In “Wolf Alice”, the main character is a feral child that was raised by wolves and walks on all fours, doesn't speak as a human would and uses smell as her way to understand the world around her. It is the animal qualities that Wolf Alice possess that creates the eroticism of the story and the subtle ways the story takes on an almost pornographic feel. “Wolf-Alice smells her way through the world, thus recalling the Freudian association between feminine sexuality and the olfactory[2] “The penis may be more visible, but female genitalia have a stronger smell”[2]. Deeply connected to women, to women’s smells, to the smell of menstruation, the olfactory is marginalized by the privileging of the visual, is made “odious, nauseous, because it threatens to undo the achievements of repression and sublimation, threatens to return the subject to the powerlessness, intensity and anxiety of an immediate connection with the body of the mother”[2] It is also the way that Carter chooses to describe our character that plays with the concept of pornography and subtle eroticism with the description of Wolf Alice.[2] Her lips are red, thick and fresh; her legs are long, lean and muscular; Her nose a quiver; (Carter, 153).
Carter uses such imagery to show the themes of sex, sexuality and eroticisms in her work, all of which are meant to incite ideas of feminism and womens role within relationships and sex.
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